Thankfully people just don't know when to give up. More six foot under than down and out, Slade have clawed their way back from death's dark chart-file to currently stomp about town (platform boots a-glinting) with alarming vigour. The band that time forgot.

Oh Nod, forgive me for I have sinned, carelessly packing you off to has-been limbo. Flail me and be done.

Their legacy of course is considerable. Arguably the finest singles band of the early seventies, certainly one of the most influential, they gave birth to a rowdy brood of classic tracks. Each and every one complemented by memorable telly spots.

How I remember teetering about like an idiot to 'Mamma Weer All Crazee Now', 'Cum On Feel The Noize' and 'Gudbye T' Jane' to name but three. Oh, for the days when a mirrored top hat was the height of street level elegance...

Eventually conquered peaks began to crumble under the weight of ambitions. movie, 'Slade In Flame' was released - maybe the Scala will dig it out and refresh our memories? - and the decision to invade America taken. Like a row of teeth at a Rejects' gig, they flew out of our lives. The end of an era. Supersonic died and Top Of The Pops was never the same again. Pause to wipe away the tears.

Meanwhile back in the States, Slade were working their loons off. Two years of hard graft reaped precious few rewards. They came home in seventy seven just as the punk rebellion gobbed to it's heights. The boys disembarked at Heathrow as an anachronism, no heroe's welcome, just more hard graft.

Then bingo! A triumph at the Reading Festival and the consequent release of the Live At Reading EP featuring the smashing 'When I'm Dancing I Ain't Fighting' - sledgehammer pop in the grand old tradition. A sparkling gig at the Lyceum was all I needed to be convinced that Slade were very much alive and well and on top form. So much for the potted history.

Wrapped in a decidedly dodgy old blue duffel coat, his golfball peepers swivelling above equally blue bags, Noddy Holder ain't quite the hero I'd imagined. I was kinda hoping he'd greet me in all his silly stage togs, so to be confronted with this duffel coat...a bit of a downer as you can imagine.

Still, the man himself was bright and cheery as was the wiry Jim Lea. Unfortunately drummer Don Powelland ace guitarist Dave Hill couldn't make the trip, intrigues up Wolverhampton way and all that, so I was denied the chance to ask really important stuff like 'Why does Dave persist with that truly hideous hair style?' and other burning issues. Thus limited I asked Nod (Neville really, amazing eh?) if they were getting a trifle desperate before the Reading break?

"No, it wasn't a matter of desperation," he declares, finally shedding said duffel coat, much to my relief.

"When we came back from the States the whole music scene had changed. It was a case of starting on the bottom rung of the ladder and working our way up again, which is what we set about to do really. Just slumming it around, doing gigs everywhere and anywhere. Not only in Britain but in Europe as well, making people aware that we hadn't split up and weren't sunning ourselves in the Bahamas. We've been working solid since the hit records stopped, always on the road.

"When we returned we were in a heavy vein, the album released then 'Whatever Happened To Slade' was a heavy album, and it didn't mean anything then. It was totally Americanised. Totally out of context to what was going on at the time. If it was released now it would be in vogue because it's a heavy metal orientated LP."

Were you completely unaware of the development over here then?

"No, not really. We knew that there had been changes over here - we'd read the papers. But you'd never hear any of the music on American radio. We were thinking, 'Who are these bands? What sort of music is it?' We got back and turned on the radio and it was like a revelation to us. Good God, what's happening?! It was a totally different feeling. We might as well have been in Japan."

The band took a year off then, to assess their own situation, finally lured back to the boards for a gig in Germany. That was quickly followed by one at Reading University.

"When we did that - Fantastic! We thought, 'Crike' if we can go down like that, let's do more gigs. And that's what we've been doing ever since."

Things weren't that simple though. It was hardly hip to be a Slade booster then. It seemed people just didn't want to know.

"The radio at the time just wouldn't play us. Now Nod and I can write some good tunes, but whatever went they wouldn't touch us. It was all to do with fashion. You can't be bitter about it, we understand it. We realised that the name Slade was uncool; we knew we had to overcome our own name and people's preconceived ideas as to what the band was about.

"It's taken us two years to overcome that hurdle...But we had to do that the first time round as well. People then used to associate the name Slade with the skinhead image. But we did it then and we'll do it now."

It was in fact a lucky fluke that won the group the Reading spot. If it wasn't for a certain ex-Sab, Noddy and the rest might still be slogging around the country unnoticed, as the singer explains.

"Well, Ozzy Osbourne's band pulled out three days before the show and so they asked us to do it. We weren't on any of the billings or anything, we just stepped into Ozzy's place. We hadn't been on the road for two months. We just got a quick rehearsal together and went on. It hasn't changed to us since then but it certainly opened people's eyes. They're aware of us again."

"It was rather funny really," continues Jim. "We rolled up to Reading in our Ford Granada, we got sent to the public car park. We got all our guitars and cases and that out of the car and off we went struggling through the crowd. When we got to the artists enclosure we found that we didn't have our backstage passes, so there we were asking if we could come in. And stretching off behind us was a whole line of Rolls Royces.

"Now Whitesnake rolling up in a Rolls Royce you expect, being top of the bill. But everyone had one, the whole bill! And there's us with twenty hit records under our belt struggling through the dust.

"That's the way it's always been with us. The story of our lives, everything around us always falls apart. We've never been able to be cool. God, we've tried, I'm afraid we'll always be uncool. We felt like the outsiders going to Reading, but when we got backstage everyone started asking us for our autographs. We felt good then, that's when we knew we were in with a bloody good chance. We never die on stage either. Been around too long. We knew exactly what we were going to do, never had any problems with audiences."

The entire show was recorded by the BBC for broadcasting on the Friday Rock Show. Forty-five minutes of Slade's set was aired. "We just had to release something from it, we had so many requests."

'When I'm Dancing' and 'Born To Be Wild' were the selected songs, an arrangement was struck with the Beeb and the EP appeared on Jim Lea's own Cheapskate Records label. It's currenly jostling around the top forty as well as making a fleeting though high appearance in our own HM chart. It deserves your attention.

Meanwhile Polydor are releasing a 'Slade Smashes' compilation invaluable for wretches like me who no longer possess the originals. I asked Nod if he was at all depressed at this preoccupation with past glories?

"Depressed? No. This compilation will be great for the fans, a chance to get all the hits on one record. But we don't relate to them in the same way anymore, the way we play them now is bugger all like the records anyway."

Jim : "I didn't even like some of those old ones. We all hated 'Gudbye T' Jane' when we made it, it was knocked up in half an hour at the end of one of our studio sessions. The same for our second single, 'Coz I Luv You'. It was namby-pamby to us, a throwaway for an album. It shot to number on in two weeks and we thought, 'What a pile of shit!' It was so wet.

"But they were good times. The success never changed us, because this band just doesn't have an ego - except for Dave. I remember there was this great rivalry between us and Bolan. We used to sit in the TOTP dressing room getting powdered up, with the Osmonds waiting behind us, and everyone was taking the piss out of one another. We would come out of the Beeb and there would be all these fans after autographs and stuff. Chicks would come up to Marc and say, 'Are you Marc Bolan? Ain't you fat.'

The duo chuckle happily at the memory.

"And now we're having to live down our success. Y'know it's much harder to make it the second time around. We've never, ever considered splitting up because we know that at the end of the day we can walk on stage and blow any fucker off - and that's what it all comes down to in the end.

"And that goes right back to the beginning. Like when we were skins we were outlawed. It was really bad then. No gigs, no radioplay, nothing. But we survived because we went to places like universities and that and tore the joints apart; not a skinhead in sight in the audience, it was all long haired hippies in those days.

"We just need people to see us at face value, see? Exactly the same as they did at Lincoln or Reading. They didn't fork out their ticket money to see us at those gigs, but once they did see us they accepted us for what we were and enjoyed it...and that's all we've ever been here for."

TRIUMPHANT SLADE

SLADE MAJOR SUCCESS

SLADE / Laugardalshöll, Reykjavik, Iceland 12/11/1974The problems that beset Nazareth when they played the Laugardals Arena a couple of weeks before had completely been ironed out when British Supergroup Slade came to Iceland for their first ever visit.
Nazareth's appearance at the same arena venue had been disrupted and indeed spoiled by a terrible sound system which had not been set up properly to accommodate the acoustics with disastrous results. Slade however, as you would expect from the biggest band in Britain, produced a slick professional show with both sound and the light show being exemplary throughout.

The same couldn't be said for local support band 'Pelikan' who struggled to make themselves heard throughout the arena as they played their set through a different sound system, which was a pity especially during Asgeir Óskarsson's fine drum solo during 'How Do I get Out Of New York City' . But the crowd, made up of around 3,000 almost entirely girls aged between 10 and 15 years of age were not really interested in the musicianship of Pelikan.

And so it was, that Slade strode onto the

stage to a rapturous reception that indeed

saw some of the audience fainting with

excitement and anticipation as these four

strangely, comically dressed men stood high

on the stage above them, worshipped as

Gods. One young girl was so overcome that

she seemed to suffer a complete nervous

breakdown and was taken to the emergency

room, with the Police clearing a way through

the crowd. Thankfully, there were no serious

injuries during the evening, and the Police

and security were able to keep order

throughout, despite the frenzy that the band,

especially vocalist Noddy Holder, seemed

intent on generating throughout, with various requests for the crowd to follow his lead as he made mooing sounds, or worse, farting sounds that the audience responded to gleefully. This brings into question whether a band such as Slade should even be unleashed on an audience as young as were in attendance. Those sentiments will surely come from those who were worried about the sort of bad example Slade would set for their children, a worry dismissed by Danish promoter Erik Thomsen who insisted that Iceland was ready and able to put on concerts by the biggest of world stars, mentioning that Swedish band ABBA could be next up in December, followed by Paul McCartney and Wings in April and the Rolling Stones next summer. Thomsen was more concerned that only 3,000 tickets for the show had been sold and was worried about any damages that would be caused by the rowdy audience whipped up constantly by Holder and his friends.

So what of Slade? Certainly those that had come to see them didn't care about their musical talent, just looking around at the sea of faces one could see the fascination, happiness and joy expressed in every single young face. Slade are raw, unsophisticated, hilariously dressed clowns who gave the fans exactly what they wanted and expected. Look deeper however and the suspicion creeps in that there is something about Slade. Fools they are not, and their wild exuberance does away with the notion that musical excellence must adhere to strict rules regarding beats per minute or that it must be delivered with a funereal solemnity of those that take themselves too seriously.

Slade's music is original in the broadest sense of the word, it can belong to no other band, and it is delivered with considerable skill, the dress sense tells you all you need to know before a note is played, pure enjoyment is demanded, and surely this could have a good effect on Icelandic music in general, there is a lot that can be learned from bands like Slade despite their detractors.

Undoubtedly, some pop enthusiasts will complain about these sort of groups, they were certainly loud, but the sound was clear, unlike Nazareth a few weeks previously, sometimes it was so loud that it was impossible to identify individual tones from the instruments, but it was all done so expertly, implemented by performers who can be commended by their exemplary performance on the night. They certainly know their worth, they understand how to produce the perfect show for the crowd and gave them a powerful show with an excellent stage presence as they played the music that has made them rich and famous and sounded just as they do on their records. Slade are a band who want to entertain their audience, the quality of the music is less important to them than having a good time and making sure that the fans have a good time with them, Holder even taking the time to laugh at their own image in a self-deprecating manner just in order to draw laughter from the crowd and keep them in a good mood throughout, as a famous poet once said "And there was Joy in the palace!"

Welcome

There is nothing new on this blog, everything here has been previously available elsewhere, in one format or another. My aim here is to try to ensure that the information is available to all Slade fans everywhere.

My thanks to Chris Selby (without whom I would know nothing)and anybody else that has supplied anything personal to this or any other media collection. I must apologise to Chris Charlesworth for taking liberty's with his book. Anybody who is interested in the group's history should invest in a copy of 'Feel The Noize', generally considered to be The Slade Bible by most fans. And last but by no means least,Keith Farley ('N Between Times) and John R. Woodhouse (Brum Beat) who have provided much background information by way of their on-line research, These should be studied by anybody with any interest in the 60's Midland Beat era. More general 60's info can be found at Marmalade Skies, a source of invaluable pop essentials.

Any offer of missing artwork would be gratefully received. My main concern is to get 'readable text' for the trainspotters.

Contributors

Official Media

All of Slade's official releases have been remastered and released on CD with good quality packaging and comprehensive sleeve notes by Salvo for Union Square. I would recommend the purchase of this collection to anybody who is interested in the group. This blog will not be making any official music available for download.

Images are for review or research purposes only. All images, audio, video, text, etc. is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

The Historian

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Chris Selby for his input. This site owes much, if not all, to his relentless research and charitable nature. Keep up the good work mate.

Slade Fans

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Subject: From Roots To Boots

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Copyright

No part of this work should be reproduced or used without the express permission of the author or his associates. Failure to comply may result in legal action. This blog copyright of Michael Parker and associated sources.